By Chris Paton, British GENES (British Genealogy News and Events)

A new edition of Guy Crannum’s “Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors”, which deals with ancestral research in the British West Indies, has been published by Bloomsbury. The National Archives (TNA) has a post on the back of the announcement detailing some of its online resources at http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/759.htm, whilst the book itself is available to order from http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop/details.aspx?titleId=2729.

From the blurb on the TNA site:

This book is ideal for anyone who researching their Caribbean family history in The National Archives and beyond. The National Archives holds records for many people who lived in British West Indian colonies such as emigrants, plantation owners, slaves, soldiers, sailors and transported criminals. The Archives also hold the colonial office records for the British West Indies. This includes state correspondence to and from the colonies and passenger lists. Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors also shows readers how to use family history sources and genealogy websites and indexes beyond The National Archives.

Fully updated and revised, this new edition covers recent developments in Caribbean archives, including details of newly released information and archives that are now available online. This book outlines the primary research sources for those tracing their Caribbean ancestry and describes details of access to archives, further reading, useful websites and how to find and accurately search family history sources.

As Britain does not hold locally created records of its dependencies such as church records, this book doubles as a gateway to the local history sources throughout the Caribbean that remain in each country’s archives and register office. This book will be of use to anyone researching family history in British Caribbean countries of Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands as well as Guyana, Belize and Bermuda.

For more on this story go to:

http://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2012/09/new-edition-of-tracing-your-caribbean.html